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Month: August 2014

I opened the jar to decant this and my entire kitchen smelled like apples. Sweet, juicy, fresh apples. Somehow this whiskey smelled more like apples than apples smell like apples.

*That’s one of the tricks to this though, don’t eat the apples after. All the apply goodness is in the whiskey, not the apples. I know you’re thinking fun times with the drunken fruit…just no. This would be a good project for unbruised seconds for that reason.

I read multiple blogs regarding this project and they were all pretty much the same: apples, cinnamon sticks, cheap whiskey. Cheap alcohol for infusions is actually important. Cheap actually does work better, it’s a simpler base for the flavors to work with. The flavors aren’t fighting the complexity of the alcohol, and the fruit or herbs mellow out the rough edges.

I put mine back into the original bottle and it’ll eventually work its way into the fridge. It should be shelf stable for up to a year however because of the alcohol content.

Apple Cinnamon Whiskey

1 liter cheap whiskey (the cheapest you can get)

4-6 apples

4-6 cinnamon sticks

1 very large glass jar or several smaller jars like mason jars

Put your cinnamon sticks into the bottom of your jar (or split among the smaller jars).

Wash and core your apples. They don’t have to be peeled. Fit as many apples into your jar as you can get-I managed to fit four apples into a half gallon jar.

Pour whiskey over fruit, and close.

Leave somewhere relatively dark and cool for two weeks, but it doesn’t have to be your fridge

Strain, and place in a clean jar (or the original whiskey jar).

Bloggers-I have started a new group board on Pinterest. Open to all DIY, craft, food, or other creative blogs, I would love to have you join. Joining instructions are posted on the board-join here.

I’m not going to even pretend I can pronounce these names. One of my friends is dedicated to Nodens [Nuada] and thinks that it’s funny that I call him Doyle (…I’m not sure if I’m hoping or not hoping that you get that reference…).

This is where someone like my friend Karen with her Masters in Classics would probably do better with an entry like this, but I haven’t been able to convince her to write for here yet. This is where Celtic, and Irish specifically, mythology, starts to get all timey-wimey.

Irish history can be kind of nasty to pull apart because, to use a gross oversimplification, there has been a folkloric habit of turning old gods into faeries. Ireland was invaded in waves and the pre-existing deities were absorbed into the myth ways, but as various fey spirits. One of these groups, the Tuatha de Danann, or Children of Danu, is one of the central groups-and probably the ones that are probably the most familiar to people.

They just don’t know it.

The group of deities involved in this era are the ones that we still see pop up in pop-paganism (think the fluffy stuff that’s easily accessible on-line): the Dagda, Nuada (who is actually going to be my lead in for the second half of this entry, because Doyle’s my boy), Lugh, Manannan mac Lir. However, somewhere along the way they were demoted. Depending on your source/your stance they turned into folk heroes (this is most obvious, I think, with the Dagda), or they shifted into a different aspect of the supernatural-they became something like the Sidhe.

I’ve heard it argued orally that they are the Sidhe. I’ve heard a lot of things about them in passing actually. I’d be interested to see how much of it actually makes sense in a sociohistorical light.

It does need to be stated that they do have their own mythology. A mythology that I’m admittedly horrible with, so you need to find another blogger for that.

You can’t just shove them into whatever faerie-esque role you would like them to be.

…Or can you?

This is where Nodens/Nuada/Doyle comes into play, and why I said that I lot more people are going to be familiar with them than they think. Because modern fantasy writers, especially urban fantasy writers, for whatever reason love turning them into elves. It seems to be a trope lately that if you want something like authenticity, you turn the Tuatha de Danann into an elf/sidhe/something prettier and more powerful than a human and roll with it.

Is this is a bad thing? Like most things, that depends on your stance on appropriation of imagery, I guess.

I saw someone doing this on Pinterest and I thought it was a cool idea.

That’s right, I’m trolling through Pinterest and forgetting who I have to source for an idea again. So consider this my citation for [unnamed blogger who isn’t me and will be named if I can find them again.]

I pulled the statistics for the last 365 days, and these are the loneliest recipes on my blog. Some of them it’s just because of the photo quality, I’m guessing (seriously, is this the year the sun forgot to come out?) or unfamiliarity (rarebit, I’m looking at you). But these are recipes that I enjoy making, that could use some love.

This is a free for all style link up-there are no rules! The only guideline is that each entry should be your own content-but feel free to link up round ups, link parties, giveaways, diy, recipes, tutorials, favorite entries from your archives, recipes, anything that you would like to share!

Today’s stress was at least productive-Mid had two job interviews. It turns out that the job interviews I stress out the most for are the ones I’m not the one going for.

So, no I didn’t exactly feel like a room, with or without a roof. I did however have a room with about five pounds of tomatoes in it because I keep swearing I’m going to fix the burner and get my canner going. However, Local Kitchen has a recipe for roasted tomato sauce and Local Kitchen hasn’t steered me wrong yet.

The thing though is, I didn’t follow the recipe because I don’t normally follow recipes if I’m not baking-any long term reader of this blog will understand that’s why my recipes are so weird. This probably falls at least relatively close, but I pretty much just baked and blended vegetables.

I was also agitated enough with the interviews I personally would not be attending that I didn’t photograph anything. Whoops.

Luckily, this means that this recipe is insanely adjustable. Use what you need to use.

At least core your tomatoes, but they don’t have to be skinned. Put them face down on your pan.

Place your other vegetables around the tomatoes- I used carrots, peppers, onions, tomatoes, and garlic. I peeled the onion but not the carrots or the tomatoes.

Bake at 400 for at least 45 minutes.

Carefully pulse in a blender or use an immersion blender, adding your fresh herbs.

Stir in a glug of vinegar.

*This does make the best sauce I’ve made yet, but I would pull back on how long I blended it or let the blitzed sauce cook down a little. I also would up how much seasonings I personally would use, but that’s a flavor preference.

Bloggers-I have started a new group board on Pinterest. Open to all DIY, craft, food, or other creative blogs, I would love to have you join. Joining instructions are posted on the board-join here.

Last night I found a link describing the ‘Starbucks Secret Menu’ with all these wonderful sounding drinks-including something called the Penguin Mocha.

Being that two of my most favorite things in the world are penguins and coffee, when I made my once a week Starbucks run, I got me a penguin mocha.

Here’s the kicker though, and I do stress this with all seriousness: Starbucks DOES NOT have a secret menu. Most coffee bars DO NOT HAVE A SECRET MENU.

This is not information I have through word of mouth: I put myself through both of my degrees working as a barista. I was Starbucks trained for four years. There is no ‘secret’ to the secret menu. These are -not- drinks that baristas are trained to know.

A barista can definitely stack a drink for you that’s not on their main menu-the ‘secret’ of the secret menu is knowing what’s in the drink. Don’t even bother with the name-because even if the drink has a cutesy name, there’s a strong possibility that it’s not a consistent name from bar to bar. But, if you know the shots and ratios that go into your drink, it’s going to go a lot easier for everyone involved. Because while the Penguin Mocha is easier to say-if your barista has no idea what you’re talking about, things are going to get muddy fast.

Especially if you have new baristas-I’ve had Starbucks baristas get very confused when I’ve ordered a cafe au lait, because it’s technically a misto at ‘Bucks. Yes, I cringed a little inside. But you have to start somewhere.

The one that comes up the most often is the Captain Crunch frapp. I’ve had people insist that their location knew it by name. Okay, that’s awesome. I’m telling you that if you walked into the bar I was trained at and ordered that by name, we would have asked you what was in it. Because there was no paperwork handed down to us that listed a drink by that name.

So by all means, order a Penguin Mocha. They’re awesome. Just make sure you order a half white/half dark mocha with a raspberry shot.

Bloggers-I have started a new group board on Pinterest. Open to all DIY, craft, food, or other creative blogs, I would love to have you join. Joining instructions are posted on the board-join here.

I might even like the media that they produce-assuming that I can see the movie version of their work. Yes, I said it. I feel like if more people were honest with themselves, they would say it too.

I can’t get into Lovecraft’s written work. I have enjoyed some of the film adaptations. I can get into the mythos-when worked by other people. It’s not that I dislike the essential horror aspect of his catalog. I just can’t actually get through his work.

There are a lot of reasons to hate on Lovecraft’s writing-the screaming racism of his work, and some of the writers of his generation make a lot of people not even attempt his writings. There’s a lot of really nasty stuff in there-plus that whole mangled, made up language aspect.

That’s not what does it for me, though, but it certainly doesn’t help (and conveniently doesn’t make its way onto screen). I’m not even sure that I can tell you what it is that turns me off of Lovecraft-but my eyes just glaze over and I go watch Dagon again.